ICAV Paragraph Structure

Quite some time ago, we're talking about 10 years, I attended some Professional Learning run by Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco of Into English. This PL was focused on Nineteen Eighty-Four but the thing that stood out to me was a paragraph components activity where four different elements were highlighted to help students understand the purpose of each part. 

(Full disclosure: I've since gone on to write for Into English but this was back when I'd only been teaching English for a couple of years and didn't know Emily or Anthonyyet). 

Anyway, the activity in the Nineteen Eighty-Four PL was focused on vocabulary and crafting a paragraph with enough relevant detail. I'm not here to talk about this today. I want to look instead at how the four different elements can be used to prompt students to think about writing structure. 

I don't personally invest myself as a teacher in any particular paragraphing acronym. Off the top of my head, I'm familiar with or have taught (or been required to teach): PEEL, TEEL, CLACEL, PEAL, TEAL, ALARM, PETAL, SEAL, OREO and I'm sure there have been some others. To be honest, it doesn't matter which of these get used, the point is whether a student understands it and if they're able to use the acronym to build an effective framework for writing about texts. With this in mind, I tend to use whatever each particular class is likely to 'get'. If the school is an ALARM school then it makes sense to use ALARM because students should (hopefully) already understand it. If some students are really struggling and have some literacy deficits, then I'll probably aim for something as simple as PEE (Point Example Explanation) just to get them started. If I have a class of skilled reader/writers then I might tell them to just write freely without thinking about paragraph formulae at all and then go from there. And if a student has a tutor who's taught them a completely different way of writing a paragraph that I hadn't even considered, then who am I to stop that if it's working? My point is that I've come to realise that there's no definitive way of doing it. 

This brings me to ICAV. I don't use this all the time but I've found that sometimes, with some particular students who are a bit stuck, that it helps them to think about things in a different way. 

What it is: Something that can kickstart a student's thinking and get them writing, which is often the biggest hurdle. 

What it isn't: A formula for writing HSC examination essays (...unless, of course, it seems to work within this context for a particular student!) 

Here is a quick explanation of the acronym:

• Idea. Same as concept, topic sentence, thesis, or point. What is the main idea that your paragraph is exploring?
• Context. Provide some background for your idea. Expand on your initial sentence by adding some contextual details. 
• Analyse. Provide an example from the text with analysis of an identified technique.
• Values. What conclusions can be drawn about the values being explored in the text? What stance or position is potentially being suggested by the author?

I like it because it builds-in a relevant way of talking about context. The values bit at the end also helps students reconceive their overall paragraph in a new way so that they're not just repeating their main point.

Here are examples of how it can be used with a preamble for students to read. The first is a general example and the second a specific one.

Poetry

ICAV (Ideas Context Analyse Values) is a way of structuring and writing paragraphs. The first step is to pick a poem, any of the ones we've looked at this term, and to write at least four sentences using the guideline below so we can start practising paragraph writing.

1. Write a sentence or two explaining the main IDEA of the poem. Don't forget to mention the name of the poem and its composer.
2. What is the CONTEXT behind this poem and idea? Think about how they connect.
3. Give at least TWO examples from the text that explore the idea. Use 'inverted commas' to quote each example, identify the techniques used, and ANALYSE how this technique highlights or enhances what the poet is trying to say.
4. Link back to what the poet VALUES and how the poem explores this.

Writing about Fritz Lang's Metropolis

Examine a range of Metropolis screenshots and select one to form the basis of your paragraph. 

• Write down an IDEA that's relevant to what you see.
• EG. Capitalist control of the means of production.
• EG. Dehumanisation resulting from capitalist exploitation of workers.
• Expand upon your topic sentence by giving further CONTEXT.
• EG. Marxism, industrial expansion after WWII, influence of German industrialists like Hugo Stinnes.
• ANALYSE techniques - deconstruct the screenshot in terms of what connects it to the context.
• EG. The close-up of the clock is symbolic of the amount of time workers are required to work, and the way that their time has been turned into a commodity to be exploited. 
• What conclusions can you draw about the VALUES of the composer?
• EG. Lang establishes the value of the individual by calling the viewer's attention to the process of dehumanisation visited upon the workers. 

It's not a revolutionary approach but it can be a useful way to mix things up a bit. I've found that it works best with the outliers at either end of the bell curve - students who find it difficult to write paragraphs altogether and students who are quite high ability but need that spark to get them started.

Credit to Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco for the initial Idea, Context, Technique, Values approach to paragraph vocabulary. 

Extension English: Elective 2 - Worlds of Upheaval

Before looking at each of the texts in detail, here is a quick breakdown of representations:

• 3 novels, 1 suite of poetry, 1 drama text, and 1 film.
• 3 female composers, 3 male.
• 2 English composers, 2 Irish, 1 German, 1 Chinese-Canadian.
• Overview of eras: 1 text from the 1820s, 1 text from the 1850s, 1 from the 1920s, 1 from the 1950s, 1 from the 1960s-1970s, and 1 text from the 2010s.
  

Prose Fiction Options

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
What is it: Margaret Hale is the only daughter of a village pastor who has separated from the Church of England for ideological reasons. In order to make a fresh start, the Hale family moves north to Milton in the newly industrialised textiles region known as Darkshire. Margaret gets to know John Thornton, a wealthy nouveau riche mill owner who is struggling against worker strikes and unionisation, and the two begin an antagonistic relationship that soon grows into something built on mutual respect and admiration. Over the course of the next 18 months, the Hale family experiences great hardships and Margaret comes to intimately know the character of the north.

Scope for Study: North and South presents the prototypical Worlds of Upheaval that is later mirrored in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Students will be able to deepen their understanding of Gaskell's serialised narrative through a close examination of its historical context, the Industrial Revolution that would quickly transform England into the most powerful empire of the 19th century. This approach will help to illuminate the various themes at play - the growing sense of class consciousness, debates around the unsustainability of capitalism alongside fair payment of the working class, the rise of new concepts such as wages and market forces and worker strikes, and the birth of a 'working class' identity.

NESA Annotations: There are no annotations for this text in any of the last three available NESA Annotations documents.

Verdict: It's a massive novel, and not necessarily all that fun a reading experience. At times I found North and South to be too self-consciously melodramatic for my tastes; evidently very much a product of its time (EG. The serialised format, the Victorian values that underpin it). I love the history/context of the Industrial Revolution and the concepts explored by Gaskell within the novel, however, North and South is such a chore to read that I can't imagine it going down well with the majority of Year 12 students. 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
What is it: Frankenstein (yes, he's the scientist for which this novel is named - as most of us English teachers keep pedantically pointing out to our friends and families) is a mysterious frostbitten figure rescued by an Arctic explorer at the North Pole. After this framing device the reader begins to learn, through dual narratives, how Victor Frankenstein became grief-stricken in the wake of his mother's death. Burying himself at university in the rising disciplines of chemistry, biology, etc., Frankenstein develops a revolutionary way to give life to the flesh of the dead. He stitches together an eight-foot-tall abomination made from corpses and uses electricity to create 'The Creature', an intelligent child-like being who soon learns the cruelties of humanity through naive eyes. 

Scope for Study: Students will need some grounding in regard to understanding the Gothic and Romantic genres, as well as Shelley's use of an epistolary structure, framing device, and the dual narratives of Frankenstein and the Creature in relating their parts of the tale. In terms of understanding context and thinking about Worlds of Upheaval, there's a lot to talk about, such as the development of an ideological antipathy between science and religion, the novel's claim to potentially being 'the first science fiction novel', and the text as an analogue for the Prometheus myth and all the historical connotation that carries. Attention can also be paid to Shelley's own personal context as the child of an anarchist father and a proto-feminist mother.   

NESA Annotations: Annotations can be found in the 2015-2020 NESA document from when the text featured as part of Extension 1, Module B: Texts and Ways of Thinking. Areas of suggested focus include Shelley's use of characterisation and dialogue to elicit sympathy for the Creature, themes that arise from the novel's exploration of the tension between science and nature, and the role of the Romantic and Gothic genres in shaping the text and representing its concerns.

Verdict: I've read Frankenstein a few times but haven't taught it. I think - hope even! - that teaching it would be a rewarding experience as it's such a rich flashpoint in the history of literature. It's also, if one can offer such an opinion, of much better quality than the other 'big name' Gothic horror novels (I'm thinking specifically of the uneven Dracula and the undercooked Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). If I were teaching Worlds of Upheaval I would probably start with Shelley's novel as the baseline text.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
What is it: A young Chinese-Canadian girl, Marie, gets to know Ai-Ming - a teenage girl and political refugee who has fled China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and now lives with Marie's family in Vancouver. The two bond over the 'Book of Records', a home-made text that contains the interwoven stories of their families from the days of China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Several decades later, in the modern day, Marie becomes obsessed with tracking down Ai-Ming once again.

Scope for Study: The narrative of Do Not Say We Have Nothing is complex and multi-tiered, essentially covering 70 years of Chinese history and the stories of ten different characters who interact within it. In a way the novel can be boiled down to two separate but not dissimilar threads - one centering on the Cultural Revolution and the other on the Tiananmen Square incident, with both stories involving a search for dissidents hiding within the vast population of China. Any students studying this text will need assistance in the form of character maps to untangle the complex dynamics that take place across separate time zones, and historical timelines to help them understand China's recent past. This difficulty aside, the language is often nothing short of beautiful and Thien cleverly uses motifs of art and music to represent the subversion of a regime that could be both stifling and chaotic.

NESA Annotations: The most recent annotation document acknowledges the novel's focus on Chinese history and is quick to pull attention onto the "social, cultural and political upheaval" represented in Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Allusion and intertextuality are identified as key techniques used by the author, and the dense yet fractured structure is also highlighted as a reflection of the novel's themes.

Verdict: I'm not going to lie, I think this novel would be incredibly difficult to teach. I don't dispute its reputation as a work of significant artistic merit, however, I think it would be very easy for students to get lost in the unfamiliar history and the multitude of characters who weave in and out of the story across such a great expanse of time. And I say this as someone who has a fairly developed interest in China's history from 1950 to 1989 - it's an extremely difficult time period that has challenged and continues to challenge historians and casual readers alike. Approaching this book as a piece of serious literature (from an English standpoint) would need more time than what might normally be allocated for Extension English 1.

Poetry Options

Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney

• Digging
• The Strand at Lough Beg
• Casualty
• Funeral Rites
• Whatever You Say Say Nothing
• Triptych

What is it: Sampling a range of poetry from Heaney's output between 1966 and 1979, the suite selected from Opened Ground is unified by concerns relating to 'the Troubles', Northern Ireland's long period of unrest in the 20th century, and the relationship of the poet with his own context. The first poem, 'Digging', sees the poet and his pen contrasted with the traditions of the fathers beforehand; men who turned over the peat in search of potatoes, much as Heaney reflexively turns over the 'peat' of his mind by examining the role of the men in his family. The following poetry moves into looking at the Troubles, with 'Casualty' throwing stark light onto the violent juxtaposition between Irish domesticity and the impact of the unrest. 'Funeral Rites' delves further into this world torn apart, and 'Whatever You Say You Say Nothing' presents the silence and complication of the culture that grew from Northern Ireland's extended period of unrest.

Scope for Study: Students will need to have a strong understanding of Heaney's context, both in terms of the situation in Northern Ireland and the critical conversations around this poetry and its willingness to deal with the Troubles. Not all of the poetry included here was critically acclaimed upon its initial release, which opens up room for conversations around the controversy Heaney courted by daring to tackle a political dimension within his art. Students will also benefit from examining Heaney's use of naturalistic speech patterns, an array of sound and poetic devices, the use of sensory language and imagery, and the local colour of Irish culture, geography, and history.

NESA Annotations: The 2015-2020 Annotations feature some notes on Heaney's poetry in reference to its inclusion as part of a paired Advanced English study, where it was included alongside James Joyce's Dubliners. The focus here, in keeping with the paired study, is on the poetry's purpose in representing the lives and experiences of the Irish, and Heaney's use of traditional poetry forms alongside more modern approaches. It should be noted, however, that only two of the poems remain the same from this previous suite ('Digging' and 'The Strand at Lough Beg').

Verdict: Highly engaging and arresting, I think Heaney's poetry would work well as a stylistic and contextual counterpoint for any of the other Prescribed Texts in Worlds of Upheaval. Once the context is illuminated in enough detail by the teacher, students will have a lot to parse in their study of these poems as the language sits at just the right level - not too obscure, but also complex enough to reward repeated reading and careful analysis.

Drama Options

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
What is it: Vladimir and Estragon spend their time waiting by a tree for the arrival of an enigmatic individual named 'Godot'. While waiting they meet Pozzo and Lucky, two passers-by, and a boy who delivers a message that Godot won't be arriving on this day. The two protagonists return again the next day, in which the same events transpire.

Scope for Study: Famously referred to as a play where "nothing happens", playwright Samuel Beckett was famously reticent to provide anything in the way of an explanation for the strange narrative and characters, and rejected notions that posited metaphorical or allegorical levels of meaning. As far as students go, there will be, undoubtedly, discussions that arise from this. The power dynamics of people, demonstrated here without contextualisation or even the possibility of context, reveal certain absurdities that humans have created under the pretense that life has universal meaning. There are allusions to death, the Bible, and motifs of shoes and hats. What does it all mean? Is it about the absence or breakdown of meaning itself? Through Beckett's deliberate attempt to avoid a specific context, students are presented with a potentially fictional world of upheaval... or a metonym for every world of upheaval. There's a wealth of critical writing available on the play that will be helpful too.

NESA Annotations: There are no notes for Waiting for Godot in any of the available annotation documents from the last three syllabuses.

Verdict: Waiting for Godot is such a fascinating text and I think it provides a great canvas upon which students can test out their critical thinking skills. Vladimir and Estragon are almost like two shadows, humans consigned to immortality in a sort of purgatory world - going through the motions of trying to be human. In Act 2, the play itself seems to be resisting its own efforts to provide an internal context for what is happening; the characters are unable to even build their own 'world' in the absence of everything else. If it wasn't for Beckett's staunch rejection of the idea that the never-arriving Godot is really God, then I'd venture that this play presented a vision of Hell. Maybe it still does. Maybe it doesn't matter what Beckett says. Maybe this would be a great text to teach.

Film Options

Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang
What is it: Freder, the son of a powerful industrialist in the futuristic city of Metropolis, discovers class consciousness after his path crosses with the Madonna-like leader of the city's underground-dwelling proletariat. Meanwhile, the mad scientist Rotwang is enlisted by Freder's father to help infiltrate and sow dissent among the burgeoning revolutionary workers' movement. He does this by creating a robot impersonator, which unexpectedly becomes a symbol of wanton sexuality and hedonistic chaos after replacing the workers' leader Maria. Gradually, as Rotwang's own vengeful agenda subsumes his original mission, the opposing ideological forces that underpin the city begin to threaten this society's sense of order.

Scope for Study: Metropolis, in the tradition of most great science fiction, presents both a general view of a world in upheaval and reflects a specific context in which Germany and the rest of Europe were rapidly facing multiple crises. Fritz Lang (the left-leaning director) embraces the socialist ideals of class warfare in his depiction of workers who toil in drudgery and organise for revolution, whereas Thea von Harbou (the writer, who would later become a Nazi) could perhaps be seen as the influence behind the Art Deco grandeur of the city's architects. Coming at the more creative end of the silent film era, Metropolis does not fit the trope of the earliest static silent films, and is a visually dynamic experience that should hold up surprisingly well for modern students if context is suitably explained beforehand. 

NESA Annotations: Notes for Metropolis can be found in the 2015-2020 document from when the film formed part of an intertextual study with Nineteen Eighty-Four for Module A of Advanced English. The annotations focus on Metropolis's function as a dystopian text that explores the impact of technology and totalitarianism. Note is also made of other contextual elements: the Weimer republic, German expressionism, the Art Deco and Modernist movements of art and architecture, the groundbreaking special effects utilised by Lang. Aside from a few cursory connections to Nineteen Eighty-Four the annotations are still fairly useful within the framework of the Worlds of Upheaval Elective. 

Verdict: A fantastically-made film that's so ahead of its time that it's managed to stay relevant for nearly 100 years. As with most English Prescribed Texts, the mileage of this (in terms of appealing to students) will be dependent on the enthusiasm of the teacher. I would no doubt teach this text if I found myself teaching this particular elective as I find it to be so worthy of study; the shot composition, the way it reflects its context, the fascinating Biblical allusions that verge on the baroque, and - of course - the appallingly decadent robot Maria. 

Incorporating Drafting into Extended Response Assessment Tasks

With the advent of NESA's stipulations for HSC Assessment, in which students may only sit one formal examination per subject (including essays set in this fashion), there is now an increased need to senior students to practise the writing of extended responses in a meaningful fashion. Prior to the new rules, students might have written essays in assessable conditions anywhere up to 3 or 4 times across their final schooling year, but now this is no longer possible.

One way to get around this is to incorporate drafting into an assessable essay. This takes away the formalised examination context and - in the spirit of what NESA is hoping for - allows for a less stressful approach to essay writing in which students can engage with assessment as learning. 

There are two examples here for different subject areas, both of which were written for the older syllabus that ended this year. Regardless of your KLA, it's worth checking out both of them as they represent different approaches to the drafting process.

• Advanced English Example

• Modern History Example

Both tasks utilise an analytical marking criteria (as opposed to the holistic style rubrics used for HSC marking). It's a different way to mark than what we may be used to, however, it's imperative to use an analytical-styled criteria when undertaking assessment as learning as it allows the students to identify specific skills they can work on to consolidate strengths and address weaknesses. 

The holistic marking grid (in which student ability is represented in bands of grouped criteria) is specifically designed as the absolute end point of the learning process, IE. This style of criteria gets used for HSC marking because the students don't get to see how they're marked at this point. An analytical marking grid (in which specific skills are addressed with their own independent marks) is designed to offer meaningful feedback to the student, and this is often what a lot of Australian universities use for their humanities courses when demonstrating to students what criteria they need to address when submitting assignments.

Anyway! In terms of the resources attached above:

The Advanced English task requires students to submit a draft at some point before the final submission date. In terms of making their drafting visible to the marker, 5 of the 25 marks have been allocated to a reflection statement that they must attach to their final submission. 

The Modern History task strips back the differentiation of skills (it's only a 15 mark response) in order to take the pressure off students who are being asked to do multiple drafts. The drafting process is incorporated here as a non-mandatory due date, which works as thus:

• Students submit a draft about one week before the final due date. Students can't be penalised if they don't submit at this time - it isn't mandatory and it isn't the final due date.
• The teacher marks the drafts and gives them back to the students with feedback.
• Students have an option to re-submit on the final due date for re-marking. If they choose not to do this then they take the mark they've already been given instead.

Roughly half the students in this scenario re-submit a new draft for marking. The other half aren't interested in "doing the assessment task twice" and will take the mark they've been initially given. It turns out to be a remarkably efficient approach as you get to finalise marks for half the students before the final due date.  

I'll write another blog down the track once I've had a chance to develop more assessments in response to the new syllabus.

Intertextual Perspectives: Revision

This image from 1934 shows a depiction of the Italian dictator Mussolini surrounded by the word 'Yes'. Once I saw this image, I found it hard not to think of Orwell's Big Brother as an echo of it.

A little while back I posted a revision resource for Go Back to Where You Came From that I used with my Year 12 Advanced English class for the Discovery AOS. In this post I explained my thinking in providing modelled analysis to support students. In the spirit of this approach, here is a similar resource that can be used for the Metropolis and Nineteen Eighty-Four option for the Intertextual Perspectives Module.

Click here for the resource.

Here are some additional notes I also used with my students in revising the texts. Again, I'd like to stress that these are just summarised dot points designed to provide a jumping off point for students while they prepare for the HSC.

Ways of Approaching the Rubric / Thematic Concerns of the Text/s

• Surveillance
• Indoctrination
• Orthodoxy
• Sex as a political act
• The role of language
• Gender
• Class and Marxist ideology (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat)
• Dystopia
• Dehumanisation
• Cognitive dissonance
• Values of the 1920s vs. Values of the 1940s
• Historical and Cultural context (Stalin / The Soviet Union, the Weimar Republic)
• Governance (Oligarchy, Totalitarianism, Capitalism)
• Methods of Control
• Apotheosis
• Omnipresence / Ubiquity 
• Power

Techniques / Devices Used

1984

• Historical Allusion
• Allegory
• Euphemism
• Newspeak
• Invented Lexicon
• Connotation
• Rhetorical Question
• Embedded Clauses
• Truncated sentences
• Tricolon sentences
• Visceral language
• Olfactory imagery
• Metaphor
• Symbolism
• Slogans
• Personification
• Contrast, juxtaposition
• Motif
• Irony
• Antimetabole

Metropolis

• Metonymy 
• Matte Painting
• Dutch angle
• Montage
• Collage / Double-exposure
• Close-ups
• Antithesis
• Generic conventions
• Mise en scene 
• Intertitles
• Cross-cutting 
• Foreshadowing
• Set design
• Body language
• Vignetting
• Salience
• Costume
• Long shot
• Choreography
• Contrast / Juxtaposition
• Symbolism
• Religious allusion
• Establishing shot
• Expressionism

Something to consider when revising Module A is to ask each student which of the two texts they prefer or feel more comfortable with. It won't always be the text you expect, and this can help you guide specific students in concentrating more on the text they don't feel so comfortable with. 2018 is the last year we'll see this combination of texts in the HSC (at least for a while)... it's a great pairing so enjoy it while it's still here!

Metonym: Figurative Technique in Metropolis

Freder builds a bridge between Grot (the unofficial leader of the workers) and Joh Fredersen (the architect and de facto ruler of Metropolis)

Being a silent film, Metropolis is primarily a visual text - a piece of cinema reliant on the audience's ability to read film grammar. If a silent film cannot convey its narrative in this way then it will die on its feet and, thankfully, Metropolis is highly effective to this end. Visual literacy aside though, I wanted to get my students to tap into the core message of the film by examining the epigraph that precedes the action:

"The mediator between Head and Hands must be the Heart"

...which is a quote that skews towards literary analysis rather than the visual. In this case it's a piece of figurative language, making use of the metaphorical device known as metonymy.

I start by showing the epigraph to the students via a worksheet as an example of a metonym and ask if anyone would like to venture a guess as to what exactly this technique is (or how it works). I then go on to explain it on the worksheet:

Metonymy is a metaphorical/rhetorical device in which a thing or concept is not called by its proper name but instead referred to by a part of the overall whole, or something associated with the whole. In other words, metonyms are usually parts of a thing/concept that are used to stand-in for the bigger idea. 

Examples:

• Washington refers to the American Government.
• The King's Hand (in Game of Thrones) refers to an actual person designated to do the King's work, not just their hand.
• The bush refers to Australian forest. Not just one bush!
• Chili is an American dish made up on beans, mince and chili peppers, yet it is only referred to by the one defining ingredient.
• The Crown refers to the British royal family.
• A hired gun isn't just a gun, you're paying for the whole assassin who holds the gun.
• Chernobyl is a city in Ukraine but the word on its own has also come to refer to the nuclear disaster that occurred there in 1986, EG. "We don't want another Cheynobyl".

Students can examine a few more by explaining them on their own, and could even come up with some of their own identified examples:

1. 9/11
2. "Going down the street"
3. "We've got 10 000 boots on the ground"  

Then, to bring it all full circle, the big question is:

Explain the example from Metropolis, as seen in the epigraph.

Students should at first address it on the most immediate level, that the Heart refers to Freder operating as the 'mediator' (the figure foretold by Maria when she sermonises the workers). In addition to this, though, students should connect the epigraph on a figurative level to the class system in Metropolis. The Hands are the workers, with the metonym connecting to connotations associated with the working class and the sort of labour they undertake, and the Head is Joh Fredersen - a sole figure who controls all else, cold and calculating.

The worksheet can be found here.

Metropolis: Context

New York, circa 1924, when Fritz Lang saw it.

Teaching context is one of my favourite things. I know I have a lot of favourite things but I'd like to think that having several favourite things helps to make me a reasonably well-rounded individual. Hopefully that gives you some context to this blog post. 

See what I did there?

As I've mentioned several times before, the most difficult thing about teaching context is knowing where to start and where to end. As any decent student of history should know, the points where a historical narrative begins and finishes are often up to interpretation. Did WWI start with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand? Or was it the so-called 'blank cheque' that Germany had given to Austria, meaning that they would support their ally in war no matter the circumstances? Or was the rampant tendency towards imperialism that infected many European nations in the latter half of the 19th century to blame for the War to End All Wars? You can backtrack through the chain of cause and effect forever.

The same is true of English texts. How much detail do we need in order to understand the situation that birthed a text? Is it enough to know what the composer went through, and what they intended? Should we also look at the culture that created this individual? The larger events that were shaping the world at the time of the text's construction also bear examination too. An English teacher can get lost in trying to get to the bottom of where a text truly comes from. 

In coming at Metropolis, I put together a PowerPoint presentation that would help students situate their understanding within a three-tiered model examining the world context, German context, and Fritz Lang's context (in that order).

The presentation below encourages students to pick the three most significant ideas out of each slide. Discuss as a class as you move through the PPT, and then - once you get to the end - have the students consolidate their understanding into the Context Organiser sheet.

Fritz Lang is almost always pictured wearing the monocle, which helped to contribute to the stereotype of a tyrannical German director that others found hard to work with.

Significant factors to consider during discussion while getting students to formulate connections between context and text:

Slide 2: World Context

• World War I took place 1914 and 1918, wreaking the most war-related devastation that the world had ever seen up until this point.
• The nature of WWI - with its strategy of attrition and the use of shocking new technologies such as gas and tanks - had quite an affect on the lowest strata of Europe's social hierarchy (the workers) as they were the ones who were conscripted and enlisted to fight on the frontlines.
• The old order of governance in Europe, the monarchies, were collapsing after facing increasing pressure from 'below' (the soldiers and workers).
• England and America became increasingly industrialised during this period, giving rise to capitalism and liberal trade as the bourgeoisie gained power in Western societies.

Slide 3: World Context

• The workers of Europe were inspired during the early 20th century by Marxist ideology, which promised equal distribution of land and wealth.
• The first Marxist state was born in Russia in 1917 through a 'dictatorship of the proletariat', with the aim being that the workers would control the state.
• The key figures of the Russian Revolution in 1917 had been Lenin and Trotsky, both politicians and activists who fought to put the workers in power. By 1927, at the time of Metropolis' release, the leader of the new Soviet Union was Joseph Stalin, a bureaucrat who would rise as a godlike dictator.

Slide 4: Germany

• The German people felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles that as it laid all of the blame of WWI at their feet. They, in turn, blamed their own government and Kaiser - leading to the deconstruction of the German aristocracy and the rise of the Weimar Republic.
• Berlin was wrecked by the rioting lower classes in 1919, and Germany faced crippling poverty after WWI. 

Slide 5: Germany

• Early capitalists such as Hugo Stinnes took advantage of the situation in Germany to gain control of Germany's economy. By 1922, he owned and operated more than 60 German newspapers, and had so much influence that he introduced the idea of the 8 hour work day to increase productivity. Think Joh Fredersen in Metropolis.
• Workers' unions in Germany began to form to represent the interests of the downtrodden workers, and tensions emerged between the classes in response to poor working conditions.
• German culture saw a renaissance of sorts in the 1920s, with German cinema in particular adopting the moody style of expressionism to reflect the economic depression that had followed WWI.

Slide 6: Fritz Lang

• Born as a Jew, Lang was brought up as a Catholic by his mother (she converted through marriage).
• Lang trained in civil engineering and art, both of which are reflected in his concepts for the city in Metropolis. He also fought in WWI alongside the workers.
• Lang co-wrote all of his films in the 1920s with his wife, who eventually developed Nazi sympathies. They would later divorce.
• Lang fled Germany in the early 1930s due to the rise of the Nazi Party.

Slide 7: Fritz Lang

• Lang visited New York in 1924 and was awed by its size and industrial nature.
• Lang's concept for the city in Metropolis was also influenced by the gangster and prostitute-riddled Chicago, the 'city of sin'.
• Both New York and Chicago were symbols of capitalism; representing the best and worst that it could offer.
• The idea of liberalism encouraged industrialists and capitalists to accumulate as much power and wealth as possible (as a means to promote economic growth).  

Slide 8: Fritz Lang (Catholic influence)

• The Garden of Eden = The Eternal Garden.
• The Tower of Babel = alluded to the film through both Maria's sermon and Joh Fredersen's towering office.
• John the Baptist = Maria.

Slide 9: Fritz Lang (Catholic influence)

• Christ the Redeemer = Freder.
• The Whore of Babylon = Robot-Maria and her incitement of the bourgeoisie.
• The Seven Deadly Sins = the symbolism seen in Freder's hallucinations.

Resource: Metropolis Context PPT
Resource: Context Organiser sheet

Metropolis: A Study Guide

Metropolis artwork by Martin Ansin for Mondo posters

Resource can be found here: Metropolis Study Guide.

Clocking in at over 2 hours, without sound, filmed in black and white, and coming from a non-English speaking country; Metropolis can seem like a daunting text for students to get to grips with. Many students have never watched a silent film before, nor do they voluntary engage with cinema made before the advent of colour. The concept of watching a film that asks for the modern day audience to put some degree of effort into engagement is, understandably, challenging for some Year 12s students. 

As the comparative companion for George Orwell's 1984, Fritz Lang's Metropolis occupies the unusual position of being a film that's older than the book that's being studied - and this is a novel that is already viewed as somewhat historical and 'old' by 21st century students. 

Theme and genre aside, Metropolis is an important text because it requires the students to work at establishing a relationship with it. It's not something that the vast majority of them would necessarily watch of their own free will (at least not at this point in their lives); it's a film that has been deliberately placed in the HSC Prescriptions list because it challenges and stretches the understanding of our students. And that's a good thing.

As a silent film in the 21st century, the mode of communication used to convey the narrative of Metropolis is antiquated but not irrelevant. In terms of visual grammar it's actually a very accessible film that conveys its plot in ways that can be universally understood. Contextually speaking, this is for a few reasons:

1. Metropolis was made in 1927, the absolute peak of silent cinema. In this same year The Jazz Singer was made, the first film to have a soundtrack that synchronised with the visuals - making it the first film with dialogue. Whilst The Jazz Singer isn't a particularly good movie it's still safe to say that film was never the same again. In the years leading up to the arrival of sound, silent cinema had developed and creatively expanded to a point in which visual storytelling had become so refined, so precise, and so imaginative that it became a new and wholly legitimate art form. You have to keep in mind that the first moving pictures had been created for audiences back in 1895, meaning that silent cinema had been evolving for 30 years before Metropolis was made. 

As you might guess from this video cover, The Jazz Singer hasn't aged well. Truth be told, it's an incredibly boring film, and the sound only features in certain musical sequences. The use of blackface is also quite problematic.

2. The first sound films were called 'talkies' because suddenly they were filled with all these actors speaking lines of dialogue. Audiences and filmmakers weren't entirely sure how to adapt to this radical change. Charlie Chaplin, one of the most famous stars of the era, refused to bring dialogue into his films for a good ten years after it became a commonplace. Other silent stars, forced to speak on camera for the first time, revealed strange voices that viewers never expected, and their careers were never the same again. For the most part, 'talkies' took their cues from the theatre and all of the creative storytelling from the silent era went out the window. They were hampered by the new requirement of including lots of speaking, and the technology needed to record this also meant that the camera (which had developed into a maneuverable instrument in the 1920s) suddenly became still again. Films became stagey and, in comparison to the grand and epic expressions of imagination that had preceded them, films in the 1930s were invariably dull. This is why Metropolis looks so good compared to many of the films that came after it.

Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, one of the last predominantly silent films. Made in 1936.

3. There was one other significant development that changed the nature of film after Metropolis, and this was the Hays Code. Active from 1930 to 1960, the Hays Code was a form of censorship that restricted the content of motion pictures. Rules ranged from the understandable to the downright offensive: sex and violence and swearing were out, but it also became taboo to mock authority figures, show characters benefiting from crimes, or depict relationships between different races. The result was the 'Golden' era of Hollywood - a time when storytelling became highly coded and stifled. In the case of Metropolis, had the film been made after 1930, the character of 'robot Maria' would most likely be very different (or at the very least the film would never have seen release in any English-speaking countries).

The Hays Code is part of the reason why some scenes were later cut from Metropolis. The image above, portraying the city's risque night life, is from one such removed sequence where worker 11811 gets seduced by the temptations of Metropolis.

So, yes, Metropolis can be a tricky film for some Year 12 Advanced English classes undertaking the Intertextual Perspectives module. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for these students by giving them a study guide that they can use while watching it. And by 'guide' I mean just that, a document that will guide them through the film.

All this means is that the 18 page document I've attached here takes the students through the entirety of the film with a collection of significant screen shots designed to cover all of the major plot points. The shots are arranged into a table with three columns, like this:

The first column contains some brief analysis of the shot, describing what is taking place and connotations or representations implied by certain aspects. The second column is the shot itself, and the third column is blank so the student can create their own links between the analysis and one of the lenses through which they are going to connect it to 1984 - Power/Control, Resistance/Rebellion, or Dystopia/Utopia. Underneath it all is a bar that lists some of the techniques and metanarratives/ideologies contained within the shot. The idea is to frontload, meaning that the students aren't left deciphering the shots when the real aim should be getting them to get stuck into the evaluation of how these shots can be ordered under a conceptual understanding of the text.

Here's an example from the booklet:

 

Explanation/Analysis: Maria enters, surrounded by waif-like children (symbolising her characterisation as a motherly figure). In stark contrast with the 1920s-style and highly-sexualised 'flapper' women, Maria is plainly dressed and has minimal makeup. The use of clouding around the lens (vignetting) signals her salience in her introductory shot and her overall significance in the narrative to come.

Techniques: Characterisation. Symbolism. Contrast. Vignetting. Salience. Costume and makeup.

The student's evaluation could then extend into one of the three aforementioned conceptual understandings. As an example of the dystopian/utopian theme this shot quite clearly demonstrates the disparity between classes - the homely Maria and her miserable urchins contrast against the opulence and decadence of the garden seen in previous shots. This is a society of inequality, where the rich are not even aware of the existence of such wretchedness. 

Here's the document again - Metropolis Study Guide.